Monday, December 1, 2014

Medal of Honor Monday: Frank X. Burke

"He fought with extreme gallantry in the streets of war-torn Nuremberg, Germany, where Company D, 1st Battalion, 15th Infantry, was engaged in rooting out fanatical defenders of the citadel of Nazism. As battalion
transportation officer he had gone forward to select a motor-pool site,
when, in a desire to perform more than his assigned duties and
participate in the fight, he advanced beyond the lines of the forward
riflemen. Detecting a group of about 10 Germans making preparations for a
local counterattack, he rushed back to a nearby American company,
secured a light machine gun with ammunition, and daringly opened fire on
this superior force, which deployed and returned his fire with machine pistols,
rifles, and rocket launchers. From another angle a German machine gun
tried to blast him from his emplacement, but 1st Lt. Burke killed this
gun crew and drove off the survivors of the unit he had originally
attacked. Giving his next attention to enemy infantrymen in ruined
buildings, he picked up a rifle dashed more than 100 yards through
intense fire and engaged the Germans from behind an abandoned tank. A sniper
nearly hit him from a cellar only 20 yards away, but he dispatched this
adversary by running directly to the basement window, firing a full
clip into it and then plunging through the darkened aperture to complete
the job. He withdrew from the fight only long enough to replace his
jammed rifle and secure grenades, then re-engaged the Germans. Finding
his shots ineffective, he pulled the pins from 2 grenades, and, holding 1
in each hand, rushed the enemy-held building, hurling his missiles just
as the enemy threw a potato masher grenade
at him. In the triple explosion the Germans were wiped out and 1st Lt.
Burke was dazed; but he emerged from the shower of debris that engulfed
him, recovered his rifle, and went on to kill 3 more Germans and meet
the charge of a machine pistol man, whom he cut down with 3 calmly
delivered shots. He then retired toward the American lines and there
assisted a platoon in a raging, 30-minute fight against formidable armed
hostile forces. This enemy group was repulsed, and the intrepid fighter
moved to another friendly group which broke the power of a German unit
armed with a 20-mm
gun in a fierce fire fight. In 4 hours of heroic action, 1st Lt. Burke
single-handedly killed 11 and wounded 3 enemy soldiers and took a
leading role in engagements in which an additional 29 enemy were killed
or wounded. His extraordinary bravery and superb fighting skill were an
inspiration to his comrades, and his entirely voluntary mission into
extremely dangerous territory hastened the fall of Nuremberg, in his
battalion's sector."